Writing Submission for Class Today

Western Avenue

I grew up on Western Avenue, the last street on the western edge of Maquoketa. For all of my years living there the street was never paved. It was gravel at first, then asphalt, with ditches on each side. It really resembled a country road. It was a long street, with no cross streets, it seemed like it was a mile long, but I imagine that’s an exaggeration. It’s probably more a half a mile.

There were really two halves to the street. The half that I lived on had homes, close together, just like any other neighborhood, but with long, extra long, backyards.At the corner was the Dunn house, which was a large home, reminiscent of a plantation. They easily had an acre lot. Then across the street was a mobile home park. Even though the trailer park was four houses away from mine, we never explored in that area.

The southern half of the street was occupied by two people. The Tubbs had an apple orchard on one side and the Cregor’s had horses and a stable on the other. It was said the reason our street was never paved or at least took so many years for it to happen was because of the Tubbs’ and the Cregor’s. They didn’t want to pay the taxes for the improvement.

Our lot was also an acre and it was unique in that my dad has his electrical shop on the property. So our house and dad’s work were together. The land is zoned both residential and commercial. We had a huge driveway for large trucks to drop off supplies.

This made it ideal for riding bikes. After work hours all the neighborhood kids knew it was safe to come and play and we had bikes and wagons galore in the drive. My parents never seemed to mind and everyone driving in was cautious as were we, always on the look out for incoming traffic.

Probably after we had lived in the house for fifteen years our church built a new sanctuary to the west, at Western Avenue’s mid-point. This made it quite convenient as my parents had us walk to Sunday School. Even though it wasn’t a far walk, many times people driving by would give us a lift. Sometimes we took a ride and sometimes we declined. I suspect it depended on the weather and just exactly who was offering the ride.

Because our street had no cross streets we had to walk to either end to head to our schools or downtown. We only had about a block to walk to the north to get to a main thoroughfare. However, the walk to the south, past the Cregor’s and the Tubbs’ took forever. We rarely took that route.

The location of our lot and the size of our driveway sort of made it a natural breaking point for people walking. If you walked through our backyard you could go north and down an embankment to the grocery store or you could go east and you entered a newer subdivision, which led to more streets and I always thought, a readier access to civilizaition.

I always felt so isolated on Western Avenue, even though we had neighbors around, our lots were all so large, so we didn’t have that close neighbor feel. Except for the house to our north. They were close.

We had two different families living there for the most of my childhood. The first family was the Olsons, Myrna and Buddy and their two boys Dave and Jay. Dave was my brother’s age and Jay was considerably younger. I used to babysit for Jay. Their uncle, Jimmy, was my age and when he would visit he usually ended up at our house playing outside. I distinctly remember one thought I had about Jimmy one summer. We were reading comic strips out of the paper and he couldn’t read as well as I could. That was it. He and I would never be married. I felt he would not be able to read the comics to our children.

The next family to move into the house were the Reisdorfs. They were quite the crew. There were seven children, and their mom. The oldest daughter stayed in Missouri, where they had lived before. The parents had divorced and the mom brought the kids back to Maquoketa where she had grown up.

Sue was my age, Tom was a year older and then there was a daughter two years younger than me. I was awestruck by their sheer numbers and the fact that one could have so many siblings so close together. My brother was five years younger and my sister nine years younger. We had three separate families, they had a ready made team.

They also crammed a lot of living into a three bedroom house. I marveled at their efficiency and their conservation of space. I also fell in love with Tom. He was a cutie. My bedroom window looked out on their house and sometimes in the summer he would stand on their patio and swing his baseball bat with numerous fictional homeruns. I was his number one fan. In my mind this earned him the right to be my husband, his ability to swing at air, with just the right form. I don’t know why he never had to pass the reading comic strip test.

After they moved several families rented this house and came and went. I was long gone to college by then and more changes came to Western Avenue. Somehow the Tubbs and the Cregors were forced to allow the city to pave the street. It truly became a whole new neighborhood when there was a gutter and pavement. It didn’t seem like we were one foot in town and one foot in the country.

The Dunn house on the corner was torn down and became a car lot. I missed that big old house. Today it has gone through another transformation and has become a Kwik Star gas station.

The mobile park rolled on out and a Mc Donald’s came in its place. I’ve often wondered what my childhood would have been like had McDonald’s been down the street.

And even the property I grew up in has changed. My brother owns the business now and he has added on to the shop. He tore down our family home and made a larger, circular drive for the delivery trucks.

The land to the west of Western Avenue that was once just field now houses  a hotel, a grocery store, a hardware store, a dollar store and several other small businesses. All those years it was quiet and now it’s bustling with traffic.

Sometimes when I was younger I lamented living on the edge of town. It was a quieter street. It was a farther walking distance from downtown and the schools. I always felt a little lonely. I wanted to run through yards several streets over and play in a lot of neighborhoods, at least those were the childhoods I thought others were having.

And now when I see how commercial the area has become I wonder if I would have enjoyed my childhood as much. Maybe it was better having it all be so much simpler and quiet and restful.

 I’ll never know.